


Chill and Warmth

by Kat_Greenleaf



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Cold as a Trigger, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Steve Rogers Angst, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, and he gets one :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Greenleaf/pseuds/Kat_Greenleaf
Summary: The cold doesn't bother Steve when he's out in the snow. It only bothers him in dreams. He thinks it's supposed to be the other way around.He is stranded on the frozen tundra. He's watching his crash from the outside.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	Chill and Warmth

The cold doesn’t bother Steve when he’s out in the snow. It only bothers him in dreams. He thinks it’s supposed to be the other way around, real world situations triggering the brain and bringing on the panic. But Steve’s experience is different. It’s wrong.

He is stranded on the frozen tundra, a plane in the background. He’s watching his crash from the outside, but he still feels the impact of the plane, the water rushing in and bowling him over as he scrabbles for purchase against the control board. He’s thrown back into a snowbank. He hears and feels the ice beneath him crack. Snow blows into his face and covers his body as the crack grows. He can’t move. He can’t move. He can’t move, and the ice opens up and swallows him whole, plunging him into the cold and dark. He can’t even move his limbs to try to swim to the surface. He can see his own face, eyes open and glazed, his lips deathly blue and face pale, white as a sheet.

He wakes up. It doesn’t matter, because he can still feel the chill. He shivers and pulls up the comforter that he always turns down to the foot of the bed, because only heathens sleep with the comforter up. He was taught the comforter is not a blanket. But he needs it badly as he shivers apart in his own bed. His fingers struggle to keep their grip on the edge of the comforter and a sob escapes Steve’s throat as he fails.

He finally manages to get it up, and curls up under it, letting it cover his whole body as if he can hide from the cold. He feels weak, trying to hide from something that isn’t physical. But the cold won’t let him go. He shivers, trembles, and shakes apart under his forbidden blanket hours into the morning. He doesn’t feel hungry or the need to relieve himself like he usually does in the morning. All he feels is the grip of ice. He rubs his hands together, and his legs. He feels like a goddamn cricket, but it doesn’t matter at that moment. He needs to get warm, create friction. He needs to get warm. He needs to get warm. He rubs his hands over his legs and his arms and his chest and his belly, and he grabs his feet in a grip that’s just a little too tight and curls up a pathetic little ball.

Sobs choke him and he fears opening his mouth to let them out, because the water will rush in and choke him worse, steal his breath and leave him to die, cold and alone. He hears a faint voice calling out to him, but he can’t answer. He cannot open his mouth, not even to tell them that he’s not allowed to answer. He whines, but he doesn’t hear it so much as feel it, straining in his throat and sinuses because he can’t part his lips, even as his teeth clack and chatter themselves into a frenzy. Steve feels sweat beading on his brow and slicking all the other crevices of his body. He knows he’s overheated under the comforter with the damn serum cranking up his body heat, but he still feels like he’s trapped in ice. His toes and fingers are going to fall off any moment.

The comforter is ripped away, and fresh air hits Steve’s face and he screams, because it’s too cold. He chokes on the noise, because even though there’s no water to be found, there must be waves crashing down his throat to clog his lungs and force him down, drag him to the depths of a freezing ocean where he’ll never be found again. He’ll disappear into history and everyone will forget him all over again.

Hands. Hands touch him and sear his skin, forcing the sobs out of his throat as he sucks in hissing breaths of air and scrambles away. His eyes are screwed shut and he doesn’t dare open them. He can’t imagine what creatures found him, buried in water and ice as he is. Maybe he’s a million years in the future, the Avengers a bedtime fairytale, a myth, his friends and family long dead and gone because Steve found himself back in the water and couldn’t bother to remember how to kick and swim and save himself.

The hands grab his face, and he rears his head back, trying to get away. He keens like a dying man when the hands grab him again, more firmly, and he can’t pull away. A voice reaches him again, still unclear but unmistakably there. It doesn’t stop trying to get his attention, and he slowly, painfully zeroes in on it. For a moment, it’s Peggy.

_I’ll show you how._

But those aren’t the right words. Through the chill, which has frozen his face, he manages to frown. Because that has to be her voice, he was hearing it just moments ago on the plane, right before the water crashed over him. But the words are wrong.

“Look at me.”

Peggy never said that. Steve whimpers, trying to pull away from the hands.

“Steve, open your eyes.”

He can pick out the words a little better now, but they’re still wrong. They don’t make sense. He’s underwater, he’s alone, he’s frozen and dying, there’s no one here to look at. It’s too cold to open his eyes, the water will hurt them. The salt will burn them if the cold doesn’t freeze them first.

The hands on his face are steady, and it forces Steve to notice the shaking of his own body, which he can’t control.

“Open your eyes, Steve. C’mon, you can do it. It’s just me, you’re safe, open your eyes, please.”

He can’t ignore the voice any longer, but he wants it to stop, because it’s torture. It was silent the last time he died, the only sound the water rushing in his ears. He whimpers, whines again, and then manages to peel his eyes open. It burns and everything is blurry and he shuts them again quickly, tears sliding down his cheeks. He should have known better. He knew the water would hurt his eyes, burn and sting and make his face all wet.

“That was good, Steve, try again, please. It’s okay, you’re safe.”

Safe? Safe, the voice keeps saying, but she’s obviously wrong. He wishes Peggy was here, because she would tell the voice that it's being stupid. Because Natasha would tell the voice that it’s being stupid, and to shut up and leave Steve alone.

“Open your eyes, Steve.”

Steve sucks in a breath, almost a gasp. Natasha. He opens his eyes and even through the painful blur, he can see red. Bright, beautiful red, like lipstick in the middle of a European bar that matches Peggy’s dress. The red pushes closer and gives way to tan, and then green. The hands pat his cheeks, and Steve gasps.

“Steve? Are you with me?”

“Natasha?” His voice is disgustingly hoarse, and it hurts to speak, choked up as he is. But he can’t believe she’s here. He’s overwhelmingly glad to see her. Another sob tears out of his chest, grating and terrible.

But Natasha doesn’t care. She pulls him close and wraps her arms around him, holding him close to her chest as he continues to shake. His hands slowly regain feeling, and Steve forces his fingers to unwrap from around his feet, which are momentarily flooded with pins and needles. He doesn’t unfold his knees from his chest, afraid the cold will reach his core, but he moves his arms to clumsily wrap around Natasha. He doesn’t have the strength to hold her tight, but she’s there. She’s there. She’s there and that’s all that matters.

Steve doesn’t close his eyes, though he wants to. He wants to hide. He stares at the wall behind Natasha, her shoulder covering half his vision as the tears clear, evaporating and slipping down his cheeks in equal measure. He sniffles, and it hurts and makes him cough. One of Natasha’s hands slides up to comb through his hair. It’s disgusting, Steve thinks, ashamedly, his hair plastered to his scalp with sweat.

God, he’s sweaty. He can feel it, under his arms, between his legs, on his face, behind his ears, where his thighs stick to his abdomen. He’s slick and he doesn’t know how Natasha is holding him, because he doesn’t even want to be in his skin, so how can she want to touch him? He tries to pull away, to apologize, but she shushes him and holds him tighter. His cheek sticks uncomfortably to her chest, and after a moment, Steve realizes that sweat means he’s warm. All at once, he gasps, the icy vice around his chest giving way to deep lungfuls of warm air. His lower body, still under the sheet and blanket and comforter, is _hot_ and sweaty and nasty, and Steve can’t hold back another sob. But it’s full of relief.

He curls up tighter against Natasha, letting himself be too hot between the comforter and her extra body heat, and he sobs against her. Air, blessed air, fills his lungs, not water. He sweats and pants and sobs until he can’t take it anymore, and peels his legs away from his chest. The sound is wet and disgusting, and he’s never heard something so wonderful in his life. He looks up at Natasha’s fiery hair, and then into her eyes, a cool green but so full of conviction and worry that they may as well be aflame. His mouth forms the question ‘why’, but his throat is sore and inflamed, and no sound passes his lips. She understands anyway.

“JARVIS let me know,” she answers, softly, her hand still brushing through his hair. She starts to play with it, letting it stick up in little spikes where it’s damp enough.

Steve can’t complain, it’s his own protocol. His cheeks burn anyway, and he knows that, on top of whatever flush he has from the heat in the room, he’s blushing furiously. Besides, he’s thankful. He hates when he forgets where he is, when he is, that he’s not sinking down, down, down. Natasha pats his cheek again and it pulls him from his thoughts. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. She won’t let him spiral.

He stretches his legs out and groans and his knees pop and strain. He pulls the comforter up again and rests his head against Natasha’s shoulder, letting her hold him as long as he wants to. He just relaxes and enjoys the heat seeping into his body, chasing away the shivers and leaving him lax and sweaty and overly warm. It’s better, he decides, than being chilled.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of wrote this for a therapy exercise? Anyway, I tried some different methods while writing it, and I think this is better for it. Let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
